Alexander Barge

The Alexander Barge doesn't get the same attention as the Eagle — but it was here first.

Sunk in 1984 as part of the Florida Keys Artificial Reef Association program, the push barge was the original artificial reef in Islamorada, put down a year before the Eagle. The plan was for the Eagle to be scuttled directly alongside it. That's not what happened. The night before the Eagle was due to go down, she broke free from her moorings and drifted north. The crew dropped anchor and held her, and the Eagle was scuttled where she stopped — just off the Alexander Barge's bow. The two wrecks have been neighbors ever since.

What makes the Alexander Barge distinctive is the environment around it. When the old Whale Harbor Bridge was demolished, the rubble wasn't hauled away — it was intentionally sunk around the barge to expand the artificial reef habitat. The result is a sprawling, irregular landscape of concrete and steel that extends well beyond the barge itself in every direction. It's easy to get turned around in. The recommended approach is to treat the barge as a fixed center point and work outward from there in sections, always keeping the hull in sight as a reference. That discipline pays off: the rubble field is where the life concentrates.

Goliath Grouper claim the darker spaces beneath the structure. Turtles cruise the perimeter. Sharks move through. Reef fish — Snapper, Grunt, Jacks — fill the water column above the barge in numbers that reflect decades of undisturbed growth. It's a dense, layered dive that rewards slow, methodical exploration.

When the Eagle's mooring balls are taken on busy mornings, the Alexander Barge is IDC's go-to Plan B. Most divers who end up here by default leave wondering why they don't plan for it on purpose.